Functionalized Graphene Enables Highly Efficient Solar Thermal Steam Generation

ACS Nano
Junlong YangTengfei Luo

Abstract

The ability to efficiently utilize solar thermal energy to enable liquid-to-vapor phase transition has great technological implications for a wide variety of applications, such as water treatment and chemical fractionation. Here, we demonstrate that functionalizing graphene using hydrophilic groups can greatly enhance the solar thermal steam generation efficiency. Our results show that specially functionalized graphene can improve the overall solar-to-vapor efficiency from 38% to 48% at one sun conditions compared to chemically reduced graphene oxide. Our experiments show that such an improvement is a surface effect mainly attributed to the more hydrophilic feature of functionalized graphene, which influences the water meniscus profile at the vapor-liquid interface due to capillary effect. This will lead to thinner water films close to the three-phase contact line, where the water surface temperature is higher since the resistance of thinner water film is smaller, leading to more efficient evaporation. This strategy of functionalizing graphene to make it more hydrophilic can be potentially integrated with the existing macroscopic heat isolation strategies to further improve the overall solar-to-vapor conversion efficiency.

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Citations

Feb 22, 2018·Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics : PCCP·Bo ChenXuejiao Hu
May 10, 2019·Nanoscale·Luocai YiZhenhai Wen
May 11, 2019·Advanced Materials·Haitao WangSihui Zhan
Aug 22, 2018·Advanced Science·Haomin SongQiaoqiang Gan
Jan 15, 2018·Global Challenges·Van-Duong Dao, Ho-Suk Choi
Mar 11, 2020·Advanced Science·Zhongjian XieHan Zhang
Dec 13, 2018·Nature Communications·Thomas A CooperGang Chen
Jun 10, 2021·Water Research·Abdul Ghani RazaqpurRong Wang
Jan 3, 2019·ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces·Kihyeon BaeKyung Jin Lee
Nov 29, 2017·ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces·Feng JiangLiangbing Hu
Oct 30, 2019·ACS Nano·Shenghao WuKostya Ken Ostrikov
Mar 14, 2018·ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces·Xiangyu YinJun Yang
Feb 23, 2018·ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces·Haoran LiXinzhi Wang
Sep 21, 2019·Langmuir : the ACS Journal of Surfaces and Colloids·Yunzhen ZhaoJiaye Su

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